The Bayreuth Festival, one of the hottest tickets in the world of opera, opened with a well-received new production of Richard Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde on Saturday, which also won praise from German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Merkel said she “liked it very much.”
The dark and pessimistic new reading of one of Wagner’s best-loved works by the composer’s 37-year-old great-granddaughter, Katharina Wagner, was greeted with cheers and generous applause at the end of the six-hour performance.
However, the mass-circulation daily Bild said in its online edition that the German leader, a long-time regular in Bayreuth with her husband, Joachim Sauer, had suffered a dizzy spell and fainted briefly during the first of the evening’s two intervals.
The report was denied by German government spokesman Georg Streiter.
The Deutsche Presse-Agentur said a chair on which Merkel had been sitting might have been broken, causing her to slip.
That version of events was subsequently taken up by Bild.
The glittering opening night appeared to have been a hit with the its audience, made up of Germany’s political and social elite.
Katharina Wagner, who runs the month-long summer music fest, was greeted with cheers and applause when she took her curtain call. By contrast, boos were heard for conductor Christian Thielemann and German soprano Evelyn Herlitzius, who had taken on the demanding role of Isolde at short notice.
The new production sets the action in a maze of staircases in the first act where the two lovers can never come together.
The second act depicts the jealous King Mark, to whom Isolde is betrothed, as an evil and manipulative figure who imprisons the two lovers in his own personal torture chamber, where Tristan is eventually stabbed to death.
The third and final act shows the delirium of the dying Tristan.
US tenor Stephen Gould was rapturously applauded for his intense portrayal of Tristan.
Herlitzius gave a scorching performance as Isolde, making up in sheer stage presence for what she might have lacked in tonal beauty.
Christa Mayer and baritone Iain Paterson were also outstanding in the roles of Brangaene and the servant Kurwenal.
Tickets for Bayreuth are still among the hardest to come by in the world of opera and classical music, with the waiting list stretching to as long as 13 or 14 years for some productions, according to the festival’s commercial manager Heinz-Dieter Sense.
The festival runs through Aug. 28 with 30 performances of seven different operas — Tristan and Isolde, Lohengrin, The Flying Dutchman, Rhinegold, The Valkyrie, Siegfried and Twilight of the Gods.
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